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Irish referendum battle deadlocked

The fate of the Treaty of Lisbon is balancing on a knife-edge, with the latest opinion polls in Ireland, the only EU country that will hold a referendum on the reform treaty, giving no clear indication of Irish voters’ intentions.

Voting has already begun on two islands off the northern coast of Ireland, but most Irish voters will cast their ballots on 12 June.

One poll, published on 8 June by Dublin’s Sunday Business Post, found that the balance has tipped back in favour of the Yes campaign, with 42% in favour, 39% against and 19% still undecided about the treaty. However, a poll conducted by the Irish Times/TNS on 6 June showed 35% planning to vote No, and 30% planning to vote Yes.

With the result unclear and roughly one-fifth of the electorate undecided, the country’s three leading parties – Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party – are uniting to launch a last drive to convince voters to back the treaty, which needs the support of Ireland if its reform agenda is to be implemented.

On 9 June, all three parties will, for the first time in the referendum campaign, hold a joint press conference urging the Irish electorate to vote Yes.

Brian Cowen, Ireland’s prime minister (taoiseach), has said a No vote would result in Ireland loosing influence in Europe and jeopardise the country’s “hard-won” economic gains. “On Thursday, the people of Ireland face a deeply important choice about the future of this country. Will we move forward as positive members of the European Union or will we take a new and far more uncertain route?” the Irish Times reported him as saying on 9 June.

Part of the challenge facing advocates for the treaty is, Transport Minister Noel Dempsey said, to combat false statements about the impact of the treaty on Ireland.

Speaking to the BBC, he highlighted the idea that ratification would “affect our neutrality – which it’s not; that it’s going to affect our taxation issues, which it’s not”.

Neutrality is the key concern of Sinn Féin, the only political party to openly shun the treaty.

But, while Sinn Féin is isolated in parliament, its No campaign is backed by a raft of campaigning groups, who were out in force over the weekend getting their message across through a mix of eye-catching media events and door-to-door campaigning.

People died for our freedom. Don’t give it away. Vote No

Their arguments include a generalised fear of a loss of sovereignty, an idea clearly expressed in a banner unveiled on 7 June by the Cóir group at the GPO building in Dublin, the scene of the Easter Rising in 1916, which read: “People died for our freedom. Don’t give it away. Vote No”. Another of Cóir’s campaign posters depicts three monkeys with the slogan “The new EU won’t see you, won’t hear you, won’t speak for you.”

Cóir supplements its case about sovereignty with specific concerns. Ratification would mean the Irish would “lose control not only of our taxation issues, but also workers’ rights issues and family and social issues”, a spokesman for the group, Richard Greene, told the BBC.

Sovereignty over values issues are a major feature of their case, with Greene arguing, for example, that issues such as abortion and the adoption of children by homosexuals could be “imposed by unelected judges sitting 1,000 miles away in a court in Luxembourg” if the treaty were approved.

Another group in the No camp, Libertas, which says it wants to see greater democratic accountability and transparency in the EU, bases its case on a perceived threat to Ireland’s economy, arguing that the new treaty would usher in tax harmonisation and place in doubt the future of Irelands 12.5% corporation tax rate.

The Yes camp was given a fillip on 4 June, when the 80,000-strong Irish Farmers Association opted to back the treaty after securing assurances from Cowen that he would use Ireland’s veto in the European Council to block agreement on liberalization deals to be offered in the current round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks.

But, with 19% of the electorate still undecided, the key challenge for Ireland’s politicians is to get their message across forcefully and convincingly over the next few days. That will prove difficult. A month ago, every household in Ireland received handbooks on the treaty, but many still feel confused – and some of those say they will vote No precisely because they feel the treaty is unclear.

Another potential deciding factor is turnout. When Ireland voted on the first Nice Treaty in June 2001, most of the 34% of voters who cast ballots voted No. When the vote was re-run in October 2002, the turnout was 60% and the outcome was a Yes vote.

Fifteen EU states have already ratified the treaty, but their decisions could be rendered meaningless by a No from Ireland.